We’ve heard a lot about ‘big data’ in the last few years, but who is connecting the dots about what firms are doing with this information? Law professor Frank Pasquale visits the RSA to argue that we all need to be able to know more and to set limits on how big data affects our lives [this goes pretty far].

Hidden algorithms can make or break reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior. Is it true, for example, that there are no regulations governing how third-party data brokers and marketers assemble and distribute ‘microtargeting lists’?

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of a new particle called the pentaquark.
It was first predicted to exist in the 1960s but, much like the Higgs boson particle before it, the pentaquark eluded science for decades until its detection at the LHC. The discovery, which amounts to a new form of matter, was made by the Hadron Collider’s LHCb experiment.[more]

New Horizons closing in on Pluto, marking the end of humanity’s first era of solar system exploration. Now, thanks to the Internet, all of planet Earth will be able to watch, in near real time, as the $650 million New Horizons mission approaches Pluto.

Take Note:
With no other major (size) space objects left to first explore as familiar as Pluto, and no spacecraft being developed to fly this far out into the solar system, New Horizons offers most people living today their last opportunity for such an experience. That’s 20 years of silence (at least!).